1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to apparatuses, methods, programs, and video content data structure for allowing devices connected to a home network system or the like to exchange and properly use video content.
2. Description of the Related Art
A variety of movies and other pieces of video content are supplied as digital content. Some of them are recorded on DVDs (Digital Versatile Discs) or other recording media, while the others are transmitted through broadcasting media or networks such as the Internet. However, the digital content often contains violent scenes or other scenes that should not be viewed by children.
Under the above circumstances, there is a scheme for adding rating information to digital content for the purpose of allowing a reproducing apparatus to identify scenes inappropriate for children, providing the reproducing apparatus with a so-called rating mode, and keeping the reproducing apparatus from normally playing back the scenes marked by the rating information if the reproducing apparatus is placed in the rating mode.
The invention disclosed by Japanese Patent Application JP 2005-44506 (referred to as Patent Document 1 hereinafter) relates to an apparatus for adding necessary information to digital content or playing back digital content by using added information, which incorporates a technology for making it easy to use a so-called rating function that does not normally reproduce specific scenes as described above.
The use of the technology described in Patent Document 1 makes it possible to add necessary information in the unit of a GOP (Group Of Picture), which the unit of processing for motion picture compression (encoding) by an MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) method. This enables a reproducing apparatus to control video data on an individual GOP basis and properly handle various rating modes.